As a New York area baseball fan, I find it particularly
frustrating how young pitchers are babied by organizations in an often futile attempt
to preserve their arms. Such things as pitch counts, innings counts,
late-season shut-downs and the like. I’m thinking of the so-called “Joba” rules,
when the Yankees were nurturing Joba Chamberlain when he was lighting things up
as a young gun five years ago.
The minute you get to like a young pitcher like a
Joba or a Harvey or a Wheeler on the Mets, and a Strasburg, on the Washington
Nationals, the teams shut them down to “save” their arms and avoid a potential flame-out.
Yet Joba and Harvey and Strasburg still ended up with major arm surgery,
despite the delicate handling. So why the innings limitations? Doesn’t seem to
work, in my opinion.
But then my judgment is skewed by flawed images of the past,
when pitchers like Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Satchel Paige, Bob Gibson, Nolan
Ryan, Don Drysdale and many others pitched 250+ innings year after year. In
four-man rotations, not five. Makes one consider if the more you work a
pitcher, the better they get. But then I found this
article that seems to have solved the mystery for me.
It seems that it has always been thus. Even in the old-timey
days, pitchers flamed out constantly—with an attrition rate probably worse than
it is today. For every iron man like Walter Johnson or Cy Young, there were
dozens of Dizzy Deans and Herb Scores and Brandon Webbs, who were done in their
late 20s.
But I still think the obsession with pitch counts has less
to do with a pitcher’s longevity than good genes and flawless mechanics. The
one saving grace is that today’s training and surgical solutions help rescue
many more careers than in years past. But, gee, can’t we have a bit more than
150 innings out of Zack Wheeler or Noah Syndergaard this year? Please?
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